Firefly

Well since nobody seems to have anything to say about it, I think its on me to give you a short status on serenty in germany. There was a premier in hamburg and since it was only 5 hours away from frankfurt where I live, and I am in the midlle of starting a new buisness that is reducing the weekends to a long breakfirst with my wife, I somehow got into trouble telling her, why I have to go. Well anyhow, I managed to leave and possibly my wife will talk to me again, one or the other day.

General

Serenity is totally unknown here. Not enough people which could have fun with the english version, and I think I wouldn’t either, if it didn’t happend that a switched into it, on a lonley weekend in a hotel in silicon valley during a buisness trip. There has been a shiny critic in one of germanies most influential newspapper (which generally means a lot, since newspappers have a much higher standing than in the US). Unfortunatly this newspaper is mostly read by people, who will never see the film, but anyhow it is good news, since the newspaper might be read by other journalists.

Location

Well, I knew that this won’t become a major act in germany, but reality was even more depressing. They put the premier into a small 420 seater. Blocked it for just for one screening, so everything was a little bit under time pressure. While the security was well organized, the general setup was a little bit creepy. If the marketing budget for this was more than 15.000€ I would be very supprised.

The crowd

I guess around one quarter had a general idea what the film was all about and about 30 may be browncoats. So for a 400 seater the browncoats where by far outnumbered. Most of the guys where there by accident. Some coming from the comic scene or some fan conventinons mainly star track and some hard core buffy fans. Don’t forget some press guys.

The film

I really feared the translation, and I was not totaly wrong about it. While I don’t envy the job of the translator, there is the base problem that some of social prototypes of this film have no direct counterparts in the german tradition. It was obvious that the people could not realy relate with it. Around 70% of the good jokes in the film, created no reaction at all. If there was laughter, it did not neccearly break out where I would have awaited it. I guess the people realy had a hard time with mixing action and humor. But it seemed that some got used to it, during the film. After all it seemed that most people where entertained, so there is some hope that the film will perform on the german market, but I would not await any miracles here.

Joss, Summer, Nathan

All the three attened the screening, or to be precise, dropped in after the film and answered some questions. All of them seem to be a little tired, and they put some light spots on them, that obvisously made them feal realy unconfortable. Anyhow, they where totally entertaining and manged to transform any boring question into something funy. In fact there was more laughter during the questioning, than during the film. The point of interest cleary was joss. Nathan realy had to jump in to get some interest, and summer sometimes looked rather lost (but very cude). I guess there was no specific question that have not been raised before. Only the bad english might be different, but I havn’t attened the screening in france and spain, so I can’t tell. And ok, Joss got his first stalker (and it must have been a german icon_sad.gif ), that followed him from the hotel pool. So this might be the end to a long tradition of gentle fans. Anyhow the three left a great impression, and I am sure I am not the only one that would have like to get a beer with them afterwards.

Personal view

Anything that joss created left me with some great moments, and serenity is no exception to the rule. And while I am undoubtfuly was entertained and had a great time (meaning I will see it again and clearly get the DVD), I was not totally satisfied. I realy looking forward to see the english version, just to be sure, that this was not due to the translation. I guess some of the stuff is just culteral differences. Mel came out a little bit to cruel, and his search for faith might be a common starter in the US, but germany where religion is an extremly personal affair, that almost never is discussed in public, this looking for faith was not a quick starter. Jaine, well that have been a real problem, but I think there was nothing to do about it. The assasine was great until the moment he got converted within minutes. While it is very german to be convinced by something beyond the limits of reasoning (and therefore the character was very believeable) robbing his faith came much to fast (at least for me). I personally had some problems with the computer animations. While some shots where great, there was a long shot at the begining, where you could clearly see that the texture and the lights were too small for the big screen. They should realy have spend another 30.000€ to put a fractal texture below. If they had no idea how, I would volunteer gladly. I hope I was the only tech geek, that was depressed about it, but for me it gave the film a C-picture quality, that was a clear contrast to the great stuff apart from it. Anyhow, on DVD it will look great. Anyhow I hope the best, and hoping that serentiy will get some more marketing money to open up the german market. The low cost campaign they starte, will not succeed here.